All About Estates

Category: Business Succession Planning

Total 57 Posts

Valuation of Interests in Discretionary trusts and Family Law

These days, it is quite common to find intergenerational wealth transfer to consist of property held in a discretionary family trust whose beneficiaries may or may not have been in marital relationships at the time of the time the trusts were created. A siginifcant number of legal and financials issues…

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INSURANCE TRACKING SHARES

If a taxpayer owns shares of a corporation and passes away, he or she is deemed to have disposed of their shareholding at fair market value (“FMV”) unless a tax-free rollover is applied (e.g., rollover to a surviving spouse). The disposition of shares may cause a tax liability. In the…

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Pipeline planning and the dangers of subsection 84(2)

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States Constitution, provided the world with this great quote, “nothing is certain except death and taxes”. In 2021, John Oakey, the founding father of three Oakey children, is providing the world (or at least anyone reading this blog)…

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Bequeathing qualifying shares: to trust or not to trust

Use of spousal trust or common-law partner trusts Setting up a spousal or common-law partner trust is a very important decision that generally results from non-tax reasons. One of the common reasons for setting up this type of trust is to protect the surviving spouse from influencers who might try…

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Estate Planning Lessons from “The Dutch House”

The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett, is an excellent read. However, for those in the estate planning profession, it is also a reflection on what goes wrong when insufficient or no estate planning occurs.

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